Effective Global PR Starts With Attitude by Lou Hoffman

My family made the pilgrimage to Disneyland last year. At my daughter's insistence, we "enjoyed" the Small World ride so many times I memorized the garb from 31 different countries.

At the risk of sounding like a heretic and alienating my daughter, Walt had it all wrong. It's not a small world. In fact, it's a pretty damn big world!

And dealing with our big world represents one of the greatest challenges staring down the public relations profession today. Sure, several years ago the words "globalization of business" registered high on the trendy scale, right up there with "new paradigm." But the Internet has taken the concept to a new level.

Thanks to the Internet, any business can connect with customers who live halfway across the globe at practically the same cost and convenience as if it were connecting with its next-door neighbor. By changing such an underlying fundamental of business, we're about to witness a tidal wave of companies pursuing global markets.

Consider some dairy farmers in Pennsylvania who got together, dot-commed their affiliation and ... voilà! All of a sudden, they're selling their milk to places like Penang, Malaysia -- not just Granville, Ohio.

Great stuff. But the dairy farmers of Pennsylvania and the zillion other companies on the hunt for global markets still face the big-world challenge.

They must figure out how to attract customers through awareness and, ultimately, brand identity.

That need is where public relations should enter the picture as one of the primary marketing tools in creating new markets. Unfortunately, everyone talks the talk, but few companies execute effective public relations on a global scale.

Where do companies go wrong?

Let's start with dinero. Companies woefully underfund their PR efforts overseas. The rationale goes something like the following logic:

The U.S. PR program runs at $45K per month in support of U.S. sales, which constitute roughly 60 percent of the company's total worldwide revenue. Since Europe delivers only 20 percent of worldwide revenue and generates one-third of U.S. revenue, the company allocates one-third of its U.S. PR budget, or the grand sum of $15K for PR in Europe.

That allotment means $15K to cover Germany, the UK, France and Italy, as well as the region's smaller markets. Further widening the disparity, the company typically places one internal PR person in Europe in contrast to the herd of internal talent focused on the U.S. market.

If you're serious about building awareness and a brand outside the U.S., you need to be realistic about the number of dollars it's going to take to move the needle. If management won't ante up, then don't tackle an entire region. Instead, prioritize your markets on a country-by-country basis; then, focus on a single country or two.

A second obstacle to global PR can be summed up in that all-too-prevalent disorder called "Americanitis." Companies figure that if something is good enough for the U.S., the largest tech market in the universe, then, by gosh, it should be good enough for the rest of the world.

In the PR function, this dynamic prompts otherwise smart practitioners to do things like tossing U.S.-centric news releases and other forms of content over the fence into other countries with absolutely no connection to the local market.

I've heard all the excuses: "No money" ... "Not enough time" ... "We're just trying to secure some mindshare" ... "My dog ate my homework." They're all weak.

If you're conducting a PR program in a country beyond the U.S., the content should be reworked to map into that given country. Looking specifically at media outreach, while reporters and their styles vary across the world, they do share one common denominator: the pursuit of stories with the greatest relevance to their readership.

That's why you find stories such as China joining the WTO, Guangzhou Polytech students launching an Internet company and the government calling out computer games as a "digital drug" headlining the Beijing Youth Daily, one of the top Chinese language newspapers in mainland China.

On the same day those stories appeared, Japan's top business daily, the Nikkei, highlighted NTT Docomo investing in Sakura Bank, expansion of Japanese online consumers and 7-Eleven starting a web-based photo developing service in Japan.

Naturally the perception of what's important to the Chinese media differs from that of Japanese reporters. Taking the time to understand the media climate in each of your targeted countries enables you to communicate your company's story to the local media in a meaningful way.

Related to content, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the pathetic state of corporate Web sites in communicating beyond U.S. borders. English today stands as the language of the Web because American companies started and continue to drive the Net. Yet reporters outside the U.S. who don't know English still need access to Web-based information.

At the very least, you should offer the countries you target with a PR program an abbreviated pressroom translated in the local language. I recognize the expense and maintenance hassle associated with localizing pressrooms. If it's any consolation, tools and companies like GlobalSight are surfacing to manage the complexities of a global Web presence.

I think effective global PR also has a less tangible side. Last year we conducted a client's executive press tour that encompassed China, Korea, Singapore and the U.S. Our efforts ended up winning an award. I asked the account director who spearheaded the activity to identify the most important success factors so I could spread the gospel. She responded cynically, "Good luck."

When probed further, she came back with her view that success on the global PR front boils down to attitude. Specifically, an attitude that emphasizes unglamorous activities such as conducting weekly phone meetings in the evening to catch virtual team members in Asia during their work day.

Cross-checking translations with country managers ensures the right nuance is captured (it's sobering how easily a word like "affiliate" becomes "partner" in translating English into another language). Nailing down logistics so translated coverage from the first country appears at the executive's hotel room before he begins press interviews in the second country is critical.

Her soliloquy ended with the statement, "Global PR is hard work."

I believe it.

It's a big world after all.

Lou Hoffman is president of The Hoffman Agency, an international tech and Internet PR firm with offices in San Jose, Denver, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. E-mail him at lhoffman@hoffman.com.